Brunch & chat: a writer’s role in dangerous times

Amidst the madness of the impossible-to-ignore NOW, I had the pleasure of sitting down with DejeunEH.com, the East Coast’s premier brunch blog for thinking people, to chat over breakfast about the current American political climate, the complications of political action, and the benefits of turmeric;)

CM: What’s interesting about it is there’s basically nothing you can read from any era in literature that doesn’t apply to right now. Because most literature is formed around the tension—class struggles, political conflict, or something. It’s what is required for every great piece of literature to happen.

D: As a writer, what do you feel your role is now?

CM: I think it was Emerson who talks about writers being people who do this unhonoured work of observing. I’ve always thought of that as a really key thing. As a writer, you observe, you filter through yourself and you write it down. And then whatever the world makes of it is out of your control. And not everyone can do that. But it’s really important that we write stuff down either to remember later or to protest or to just say, “I’m here and I’ve had this experience” and for somebody else to read it and say “I’ve had that too”.